Manipulating Viral Buzz

The move to bring a measure of predictability to the still-unpredictable world of viral marketing is being driven by clients. They are trying to balance the risks inherent in a new marketing medium with the need to prove return on investment.

There is still debate over what constitutes a true viral campaign. Some feel it’s one that happens organically instead of being planned out like a regular ad push. Nevertheless, agencies continue to be asked for efforts that will tap the social media to build buzz.

Consider Denmark-based GoViral. The company offers video services with a guaranteed number of views or visitors, typically about 300,000 for a U.S.-focused campaign. The company uses a network of niche video sites and other destinations to get clients’ content in front of influentials likely to spread it, using both paid and unpaid methods.

For Nissan, GoViral helped seed viral films ahead of the automaker’s spring launch of its Qashqai model on sites popular with the car, sports and skater communities. Videos are embedded with software for easy tracking.

The Nissan virals attracted 12.7 million views!

Another agency even tells clients it can land their videos on the list of YouTube’s “most viewed” clips of the day, which is sure to drive interest.

Where’s the buzz? If you engage people with high-quality content, they won’t care if it’s branded. And people will pass it on. I believe you need to think about how to crank up the quality meter on your content. Success or failure will depend on that, because otherwise there is too much risk of it coming across as false or commercial.

Be sure to listen to my podcast later this week with Sean O’Driscoll on finding and harnessing influentials in a community

2 comments to Manipulating Viral Buzz

Hi Paul, first: nice article. second: I invite u to visit my blog. third:I m working at Goviral and with my “short” experience I can tell you that where there is a new technology or a new kind of marketing..there are always more potential as much risks..viralmarketing included. To many companies think that with viral marketing they can have a sure success and a good ROI..WRONG! If the product is not good and attrative..it’s a boomerang. best